Leave tonight or live and die this way
by WaltzMatildah
Summary: Post season six finale: A googled news article leads to an impromptu cross country road trip and an awkward family reunion of sorts. An Alex and Amber fic with mentions of the remaining Karev family members.
1. Leave tonight or live and die this way

**Leave tonight or live and die this way...**

by Waltzmatildah

* * *

He had a girlfriend one, or a friend who was a girl, someone to fuck, no strings attached. Looking back now it can be a little hard to tell the difference. She remembers blonde hair and straight white teeth and thinking she could be a model if she wanted. If she wasn't from Iowa.

Because models don't come from Iowa.

She always knew that.

He'd play their dad's guitar for her, the girl who was his friend. Stretched out across his bed, sun breaking through mismatched curtains to illuminate the blonde hair and the white teeth and her brother's fingers as they lazily strummed tunes she recognised, tunes she didn't.

She remembers sitting out in the hall, his bedroom door pushed to mostly closed, only sweet sound and dancing dust motes escaping through the crack. She'd close her eyes and imagine a boy, him, any boy, any _body_, singing to her...

_... she's seen her share of devils in this angel town._

_But everything's gonna be alright..._

_Rockabye, rockabye..._

She could fall asleep to the sound of his voice.

* * *

When she's bored in class, and even, sometimes, when she's not, she types his name, one letter at at time, slow and deliberate, into google.

Hits enter and closes her eyes. Imagines what she'll see when she opens them again.

He saved a pregnant girl once. Pulled a hunk of concrete off her face. CNN told her that.

She doesn't think about why he didn't tell them himself.

He doesn't have a facebook page. But she supposes hot shot doctors don't have time for things like 'social networking' not when they have real networks to weave. And he chose to be gone years ago. She figures facebook's only going to bring him back so if she were him she'd steer clear too.

She'd stay gone from this shit hole.

Just give her half a chance.

A L E X space K A R E V

(delete)

D O C T O R space A L E X A N D E R space K A R E V

(enter)

Closed eyes, held breath.

* * *

She stands. Sends her chair flying back a few metres to crash into Jack or Theo or Elizabeth, who even cares?

Mr. Lamont stops speaking. He looks to be mid-sentence but she wasn't listening anyway so it makes no real difference in the end.

She reaches for her phone, grabs her wallet with the other hand and shoves it deep into the back pocket of her jeans.

He's looking at her now. It's not the first time she's caused a scene and it probably won't be the last, so he's not as surprised as he might have been.

She stares back. Opens her mouth to speak.

Closes it again without a word.

She runs then. Leaves her textbook flipped open to the incorrect page and her backpack where she'd discarded it under her chair almost an hour ago.

The classroom door sticks. She's seconds from kicking the fucking thing down when the handle finally gives, spitting her out into the vast hallway.

Empty save for rows and rows of lockers.

Standing sentry.

* * *

He sends them an envelope every month. Special delivery.

Meds for their mother. Sometimes a cheque. Or cash. She remembers, years ago now, or maybe not that long, she'd sit on the porch and wait for the mailman. See him round the corner at the end of their street and painstakingly make the journey to their letterbox, a wooden rectangle in desperate need of paint, a wobbly, hand drawn 37 scrawled in thick black ink announcing their place in this world.

She'd hold her breath and leap thirteen steps along the concrete, smile forcefully at the mailman while he shuffled through envelopes and postcards and packages and bills and _just hurry the fuck up already, mister..._

This time, she'd think, this time he'll mention me. Or send me a letter. Or a birthday card for next week, next month, next year.

And she'd pretend she didn't give a _flying fuck_ when nothing ever came.

* * *

There is cash under her mother's bed. She's shocked at how much.

She grabs fistfulls of it, stuffs in deep in her overnight bag. Thinks twice.

Pulls some of it back out.

Clothes, apples, a can of coke, her toothbrush.

She's missing things, forgetting them.

But she can't think straight enough to care.

* * *

She takes the I35 north before taking a left on the I90 and heading west.

West, west, west.

She's never even been across the state line and her heart skips a beat when the signs say _Welcome to Minnesota... South Dakota... Wyoming..._

The roads are straight and wide. Radio reception splutters in and out. The CD player died months ago and she never bothered to get it fixed.

Her iPod keeps her company until that dies too.

The symbolism is blinding. She slides the car to a stop on a side road and scrambles into the gutter. Dry heaves in the dust.

Fear, regret, uncertainty, rage.

Her cell phone bleats miserably on the passenger seat. Her inbox quickly fills.

She didn't tell anyone where she was going.

Or why.

They'd only have talked her out of it.

* * *

Aaron talks shit about him all the time. Her mother thinks he's down the shops getting milk and potatoes. Or busking in the mall. Or still in juvie. Depends on the day, the week, the month.

It's all she can do not to launch herself at them, scratch their eyes out with her fingernails.

She goes cold instead. Clamps it down with a quiet _'shut the fuck up' _that works. Most of the time.

She runs out of money in Bozeman. As in, literally runs out of money.

Their dad's guitar is slung across the backseat. She pawns it for gas money and has to stop at the side of the road because she can't see _shit_ and her mascara is a fucking mess.

_Everything's gonna be alright,_

_Rockabye, rockbye..._

She could fall asleep to the sound of his voice, once upon a time.

* * *

In the heady hours between midnight and four am, with the black of the highway meeting the black of the night, she thinks that maybe he's already dead. That she will be too late.

She contemplates swinging the car into a u-turn, slows the wheels to barely a crawl.

She thinks her dad might be dead too, but she's not allowed to talk about him and she's not allowed to say his name so she doesn't know for sure.

She doesn't know for sure.

And so she keeps on driving. Eyes on the stars.

* * *

She used to buy magazines in the absence of family photos. Cut out the pictures of brothers and sisters and moms and dads and slide them into the plastic pockets she had hidden between the mattress and the box spring of her bed.

She set them all on fire with a zippo lighter last spring. Watched as thick smoke curled lazily between her fingers.

Lit a joint from the embers and stopped pretending.

She pulls over to sleep. It's the middle of the day but she figures it's safer than a truckstop in the dead black of night.

She buys fries from the McDonalds on the corner. It's all she can afford and she eats them one at a time. Resists the urge to shove them all in her mouth together. Ketchup and salt and grease and potato.

She dreams. Blood and screaming and running around barefoot in her backyard.

It wasn't all bad, she doesn't think.

Home.

She doesn't remember him leaving.

Just knows that he left.

Never came back.

* * *

Seattle is wet.

Wet and grey. She steals a wallet at a bus station. Scruffs the notes and an Amex card and hands the rest in to a passing cop.

She's trying harder these days.

At least there's that.

She zips her coat and tucks her chin in. Shivers violently.

She knows it's not just the weather.

The lobby is huge. Intimidating as fuck. Polished floors and famous artwork on the walls.

She learned, years ago, that if you need to get in somewhere you probably shouldn't be, just act like you know what you're doing and where you're going and people are unlikely to question you.

It works, for the most part.

The lady at the reception desk looks her up and down pointedly.

_Bitch._

But she thanks her for the information nonetheless, rides the elevator to the seventh floor. Weaves her way to room 109 with one hand pressed to the wall and her eyes on the toes of her faded converse all stars.

The article was over a week old. The article about the shooter. About the fucking psycho that lost his shit and put bullets in anything that moved.

Put bullets in her brother.

The article was over a week old and she has no idea what to expect now that she's here.

* * *

She remembers.

He was always angry at something. Someone. Teachers, social workers, people in the street.

Her.

Mostly though, she thinks he was angry at himself.

When they fight Aaron says she's just like him. He thinks it's an insult. Means it to be one. She screams when he says it, rages that he doesn't know _shit_, takes her shoes off, one by one, to throw at his retreating back.

But it's only because she knows it's a lie. She could never be like him, no matter how hard she tried. She's not smart enough or strong enough.

She's no where near brave enough.

* * *

His room is empty. There are flowers, which seems weird. She wonders if she should have bought grapes. She read that once.

You're supposed to bring grapes.

She forgot to bring grapes.

A door to the side swings open.

And there he is. Older. Not as big as she remembers.

_Alex_.

His face creases into a frown. Confusion splashed like neon. He doesn't recognise her and she can't for the life of her think why she ever imagined that he would.

_Fuck this shit._

She backs up a step. Her head connects with a crack, skull on door frame. He's attached to something. Literally attached to it. Tubes and machines and _oh God, I'm gonna be sick._

Bandages wrap his chest, mummy-like and surreal. He's stopped moving. Is just standing there, staring at her. His mouth open in this way that tells her he's finally figured his shit out.

Just as she's losing hers.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

She finds her voice. Stammers out a string of apologies that she's not entirely sure she means and turns to run.

_Run._

She bounces off something soft, something hard, she's not quite sure. A human chest. Her head snaps back and her hands leap to her nose and a scream builds, hot and tight in her throat.

_Run, run, run..._

But arms fold around her from behind. Insistent and sure, and she clamps down on an overwhelming desire to struggle because a fucking psycho nut job put a bullet in his chest and she refuses to be one more thing that hurts him.

No matter how bad he hurts her.

"Amber."

And she always could fall asleep to the sound of his voice.

Once upon a time.


	2. The world you know is somewhere else

**Chapter Two: The world you know is somewhere else...**

By: Waltzmatildah

* * *

Turns out the chest she smacked her face into belongs to his girlfriend, friend who is a girl, someone he fucks, no strings attached.

She hasn't quite figured out which one it is just yet.

Or how she feels about it.

She's blonde. And she has straight, white teeth and she refuses to see it as anything other than a coincidence.

She stammers out some words. Or at least some sounds. She's not entirely convinced how phonetically correct they are. His arm, the one that's not wrapped around his ribs, is still thrown loosely over her shoulder. The claustrophobia is suffocating.

And confusing.

She'd longed for this moment. And now it's here.

And everything about it feels backwards and inside out and upside down.

They're strangers. DNA and a shared last name have never felt so meaningless.

Not in the grand scheme of things.

* * *

Dinner is half a strawberry milkshake from the cafeteria and a rain soaked cigarette bummed from some dude in a high visibility jacket and candy print rain boots. The bandage stuck haphazardly to the side of his head seems to be the least of his problems.

But he offers her a light.

And he doesn't ask questions that she can't find the answers for. And as she exhales into the endless wet she tries to remember what the fuck it was that she'd been hoping to achieve by coming here.

Tries to reconcile it with what she's achieved so far.

Which is nothing.

* * *

She remembers her mother telling people all about him in the days after he left. Dana, the check out girl that he used to date years ago, when she still had braces on her teeth and bangs that fell to her lashes. Old Mr. Sampson on the bench outside the library with his belt of packing string and perpetual stench of urine and death. People she'd never met before, people that they passed idly in the street.

And she never knew which story would be the oracle of the day.

The one where she kicked him out because he was an ungrateful little bastard who had no respect for his family.

The one where he'd gone to college to become an astronaut. That he was going to fly to the moon someday, would wave at them as he slipped out of one atmosphere and into another. Weightless and free.

The one where he'd run away and no-one had seen or heard from in him in weeks. Where he was probably dead in the gutter like his father and it was one less mouth for her to have to feed so good riddance.

The one where...

So many _the one where_s that the truth got lost in the middle. Tied up and tangled in threads and spindles.

Knotted loosely around her fingers and fraying fast.

* * *

She slinks back in the general direction of his room, one hand trailing against the wall again. Left this time instead of right. As though the alteration might make some kind of tangible difference.

He's asleep when she gets there. Eyes closed, lips parted, some type of tube device wrapped under his nose. The perky blonde curled in a chair by his side, her fingers laced through her brother's like some kind of proof that she's supposed to be there. Like the chair has been placed in that spot just for her.

Like she's family.

The sight ices the blood in her veins.

* * *

She guesses she should leave. Just get back in her car and point it east and forget the whole thing ever happened.

But she's outta gas. And money. And she's already pawned the only piece of her past that ever meant anything to her anyway and now she's too empty to even move, let alone run.

Run away.

Run fast.

No matter what her instincts are screaming.

_"Get out, get out, get out while you still can…"_

She slides down the wall 'til her backside meets her damp heels. Waits for her legs to fade slowly to numb so they'll finally match how her insides seem to feel. Blinks a look at her watch and attempts the sloppy calculations that will give her an idea of what's going on at home.

Home.

Wonders with a jolt where that even is anymore.

And math never really was her strong suit.

* * *

She's half asleep when she's pulled to her feet. Pins and needles and cool hands around her wrists. The room has faded to dull and she blinks, guesses night has well and truly closed in on them.

Heavy and haunting.

She's pushed into the back of a car, too tired and too lost to protest her apparent abduction. Somewhere in a very primal part of her brain a voice is screaming blue murder, fingernails down a chalk board, but it's too deep to transform into actual sound and so she stays silent, buckles her seat belt like the good girl she's never quite managed to be and concentrates on keeping her eyelids stretched to open for one more minute…

One more minute, one more minute…

* * *

They drink tequila, she notes. This mismatched group of humans her brother seems to call his friends. They drink tequila and lots of it.

Most of the time they don't even bother with the limes.

That they fill her shot glass to overflowing without question tells her more than any amount of forced conversation ever could.

And she always was well versed in the art of effective self medicating.

Wonders, absently, if it's maybe a genetic thing...

* * *

They let her stay for a week before the questions start. Before the sideways looks and the whispered conversations that they think she's oblivious to ramp up in frequency. Before judgments are made by people that don't know the first damn thing about her.

She fights with him then.

Beside his bed in the hospital. Where tubes disappear under covers and into holes between his ribs. Where a perky blonde sits vigil, watches her through lowered lashes like she _knows_ things that are none of her freaking business anyway.

_Bitch._

And she says all the things that she swore to herself she'd never give voice to. Hateful accusations delivered with a venom she'd not known before. Throws her fists around and stamps her feet like the five years old girl she thinks she'll always be when it comes to her big brother and the way she remembers him.

She regrets it immediately. Begins a rapid recant of her words that is stumbling and desperate and little more than a sob that gets stuck somewhere high in the back of her throat. And he's staring at her like maybe she was the one with the gun all along.

And she remembers then. In that heady moment between hiccuping gasps.

She remembers the true _The one where..._

Realises without doubt that the trigger had been pulled on him long before this most recent bullet slashed a path through the place where his heart should beat.

* * *

She came in from playing once. Making mud pies in the flower bed out back.

As idyllic as that sounds.

And there was screaming. But there was always screaming and so it didn't feel like anything new or different or out of place.

But there was blood on his face.

And her mother was crouched in a corner holding the kitchen broom over her head in some macabre tableau of self defense that would have been funny but...

But there was blood on his face.

And she reached for him. Pushed chubby, childish fingers into the slick and pulled back when he didn't so much as flinch. Pressed her fingertips together and rubbed. Her brother's red blood. Smeared to pale pink under her nails.

A stain that she never quite managed to wash away.

Not like mud pies that dissolve and disappear down drains.

And the difference was, this time, the screams were her own.

* * *

She makes it as far as the elevator. Polished metal doors painted with the smudged fingerprints of strangers. They remain steadfastly pressed together, a karmic _fuck you_. She pushes her fingers into her mouth. An attempt to muffle screams that escape and evade nonetheless.

Foot steps sound behind her. The sloppy slap of rubber against floor tile that comes to a squeaky halt somewhere in the space behind her back. Where most things of consequence seem to happen these days.

And she thinks she can almost predict how the next five minutes of her life will pan out.

* * *

She's herded down stairs and along hallways to a bathroom in a part of the hospital that she doesn't quite recognise. Is plied with paper towels that have been soaked to dripping and torn and ends up with mascara smudged to her chin.

The perky blonde looks as perfect as ever.

She slams her eyes shut to erase the image.

Hears a voice echo in the back of her head instead. A looping monotone that could be her own but isn't. Because fathers get drunk and mean. And they slap people around and treat you like you're nothing, and mothers bail right when you need them most, and siblings are never what you build them up to be. Disney fairy tales of white knights on horseback and cinderella princesses dancing in impossibly fragile slippers.

And as much as she wants to scream into her perky blonde face with the straight, white teeth, _just shut the hell up_, she twists herself into the words instead and lets them catch her before her head slams into the concrete slab it feels like she's spent the last ten years plummeting towards.

* * *

She did a project once. In ninth grade. A rudimentary family tree for a science class on genealogy. Spent three weeks crafting a completely fictional picture perfect structure of a mother and a father. Of brothers and sisters who lived together and functioned in some kind of dream-like harmony.

She got ninety three percent and a constant stare of pitiful concern that followed her around for the days and weeks the followed.

She'd fooled no-one but herself.

* * *

They sit. Side by side.

Silent.

Shoulders pressed together in some jagged gesture of shared experience and solidarity. She hates it even as she leans her weight more completely into it.

Whispers then. Whispers that she's sorry. That she's sorry for screaming. For ruining everything.

For even coming here in the first place.

Landing on their doorstep like some after school special in need of an intervention. Filled with big ideas full of nothing but hot air and steam.

Whispers more forcefully that she'll be leaving now. Undoing what she's done in the way that all Karevs undo their mistakes. At a run that doesn't allow for turning back.

For looking over shoulders at the people left behind.

Faded and fading into the distant horizon.

But she can't actually see through the stinging saltwater blur. Not even the tips of her toes. And she isn't sure she quite has the energy required to run just yet.

Not now.

Maybe tomorrow.

So can she please stay.

"Please? Just one more night?"


End file.
